MyPhone + Windows Mobile = Bliss

11/01/2011

I love worded equations! Especially when they like the ones above^

I do hope by now you know that I have been a fan of the Windows Mobile since 6.1 Professional (not as great as WP7 in looks department but still does the job for me!) but this does not mean I don’t like other mobiles especially some of the models that Sony Ericsson (especially K850i which is now old) brings out but I was converted when I got my first HTC Touch Diamond!

I wanted to share with you something special called Microsoft MyPhone that I now depend on a lot especially when I’m travelling and can’t be bothered to take my laptop with me everywhere especially on the London Underground. I have Microsoft Office Mobile on my phone and seems to come in most of the windows mobile platform phones pre-installed so here I am tapping away this article on the central line 🙂 on Mobile word.

You maybe wondering there is no way with me being so lazy I’m going to connect the phone up using a USB cable to my laptop. Your right there! Next day I logged into http://myphone.microsoft.com or WP7 users use http://windowsphone.live.com that allowed me access to the last synced items from phone online! (I sync daily and it is done all automatically via a MyPhone App)

The MyPhone is app comes pre-installed in all newer versions of the windows mobile platform but for earlier versions from 6.X you can download it from http://myphone.microsoft.com/install. The app requires a Windows Live ID so it stores all the stuff all into your special MyPhone account away from the rest of the stuff – Hotmail/Live Messenger.

What stuff does it store/sync…

Contacts – Ever left your mobile at home and your on holiday. Want that number on your phone! Don’t want to wake your family up at 4am, then log in and find the contact details from your phone online! You can also add and delete contact online so its great when you been to networking event and want to add the numbers quickly to your mobile phone.

Try this:

Ever switched sim card and selected the option for the phone to copy sim contact to phone memory which create duplicates and then you have duplicate contacts. (grrrr) Don’t stress there is an option online for you to find duplicates and then deal with them.

Calendar – It syncs your mobile calendar to an online version. Again you can edit, add, delete events online or find duplicates.

Improvements Needed!!:

I hope they allow us to export the data like web mail calendars do so I could sync it with the Windows Calender or my web mail calendar as a extra backup. (Never can have enough backups)

Tasks – It syncs your mobile calendar tasks list to an online version. Again you can edit, add, delete tasks online or find duplicates.

Text Messages – does what is says on the tin sncys all your text messages into the online account and you can delete them from the online account so the next time it syncs your phone the text gets deleted from your handset.

Interesting Use:

Left your phone at home, unlocked and accessible to your family, don’t want to share those texts that you sent to the girlfriend with the family then delete the text online and see then go at the next sync that if they’ve not seen the text by then…

Favourites – This is great as it syncs all my finds from Internet Explorer Favourites to the online account so I don’t event have to go to the mobile backtrack to find the url (the website link address). Again you can edit, add, delete favourites online or find duplicates.

Photos and Documents – This is my favourite items to snyc as both allow me to seamlessly transfer data from online to mobile or online to desktop without the need of wire! I use it nearly every week! I also sometime upload word documents that I need to read via online so when I’ve got time on my hand I could read it on the phone. (Secrete tip: Got a pdf/text document or other format you can place into your document sync folder for it to upload online and then just download it!)

Interesting Tip:

You can set up the MyPhone account so you can share it to your other social networks or online services like Flickr but the sharing has to be done manually by selecting what images you want to share.

(Room for improvement here so it happens automatically but then again it’s good way to protect yourself from those silly photos you thought were cool at the moment appearing on your other accounts)

Videos and Music – Both videos and Music can be uploaded online then sync to your handset or deleted exactly the same process to the other items. I only wished I had a faster upload speed then I would use it more to upload music and videos.

Few that’s all the stuff it can store online… Remember this it is all FREE! and we keep the right to the content! (I’m checking up on the latter claim as i remember reading article about it somewhere I hope to ask and update this soon)

Maximum storage space is 200.00 MB (I do hope they drop the limit and open it up to the sky drive limit which is much more better) and I forgot to mention about Archive – you can archive all the content and is archived if you delete any item from online or offline to ensure you don’t lose anything (Never used it personally)

I still haven’t mentioned the extra services available for a small fee! They include view last location of the phone, erase the phone, lock your phone and ring your phone loudly for 60 seconds regardless even if on silent or on vibrate only mode. (I tried as a trail it is really loud and does work!)

By know if you not interested I give up, if you have a windows mobile phone that can work with MyPhone and have unlimited data plan for your mobile tariff then you should use it link it up with your Windows live ID just as a backup! By the way did I mention I have two phone linked to one MyPhone account both feeding of each other… I’m going to stop now!

Tell me what you thought of the service? Do you use it? Did you like the depth of this article, prefer lot less or got other tips/improvements that you want to suggest? Go ahead… Just comment!

Update: Using the service for real is no match to just reading about as i learnt the premium services offered for Windows Phone 6.X (WP6.X) users are available for FREE for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) users.

I do feel WP7 (myphone.live.com) do still get short straw; as the service does not link to WP6.X service (myphone.microsoft.com) which did not make it easy to move to the new version/device and does not store texts though it is linked too Xbox live. I do hope soon both the different versions of MyPhone merge together to help users migrate easily and store data seamlessly without the need to worry about version of Windows Phone platform.